Pól Ó Lorcáin
Paul Larkin

Chroniclers are privileged to enter where they
list, to come and go through keyholes, to ride
upon the wind, to overcome in their soarings up
and down, all obstacles of distance, time and
place.
Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge,
Chapter The Ninth

The DUP and an abject Irish media

In the last week we have had Peter Robinson of the DUP calling for Martin McGuinness to be investigated for his alleged activities (officially acknowledged to have been minimal) on the day of the Bloody Sunday massacre and now we have DUP MP Nigel Dodds calling on the IRA members involved in the Bloody Friday atrocity to put their hands up and admit what they did. See this report from RTÉhttp://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0720/call-for-bloody-friday-attackers-to-come-clean.html

The IRA’s Bloody Friday bombings happened 40 years ago with 26 explosions that led to nine random civilians being killed and scores of people maimed and injured, 77 of whom were women and children. The IRA has apologized for the Bloody Friday attacks and privately IRA figures have admitted that “in hindsight” there was a sectarian element to the bombings.

The DUP's Peter Robinson marching alongside arms dealer Noel Little

Now it is understandable that these two senior DUP figures should put the Unionist position in this kind of debate but what I find incredible is the difference in treatment they receive in the media in comparison to Sinn Féin. Lest any of us should forget, it was not the IRA but the DUP’s (in an earlier political guise) Ulster Protestant Volunteers that exploded the bombs that lit the fuse for the modern day Troubles
Indeed, it is worth quoting verbatim from a Wikipedia report, which gives a succinct summary and explains the DUP’s inextricable link with loyalist terrorism:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Protestant_Volunteers

“The Ulster Protestant Volunteers were a loyalist and fundamentalist Christian paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. They were active between 1966 and 1969 and closely linked to the Ulster Constitution Defence Committee (UCDC), established by Ian Paisley in 1966. The UPV launched a bombing campaign to destabilize the Northern Ireland government. It also took part in most of the counter-demonstrations organized by Paisley in response to the Catholic civil rights marches of the late 1960s. The motto of the UPV was "For God and Ulster". Many of its members also belonged to the Ulster Volunteer Force.”

To my knowledge, not one journalist has asked the likes of Peter Robinson or Nigel Dodds whether they will now ask terror elements from within their own political constituency to put their hands up about the UPV bomb attacks, Paisley’s Third Force and Ulster Resistance and the DUP organized South African arms shipments, which caused so much carnage.

Don’t blame the DUP leaders; because they are only doing what any other political party would do in declining to show their own paramilitary slip. Blame the media for its craven style of journalism. Blame a situation where RTÉ treats Martin McGuinness as a murderer and Ian Paisley like the country’s cuddly grand old uncle.

@Paul Larkin
Carraic, Gaoth Dobhair
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Fógra/Announcement

We have to talk about Colonel K – Paul Larkin’s talk at Féile an Phobail.

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